The Endicott Enquirer News from the Southern Tier

Manufacturing and China: The Truth.

"The Americans are making China very rich. If Wal-Mart and all these other outfits would quit ordering things and importing things from China and everything would be made in America, China would not have near the wealth that it has now. That's the American way, I guess, so." - Williamsport

The Herald-Mail

And to this point I say: If you think you want to stop giving money to the Chinese, Vietnamese, Indonesians, etc. then you'd best be ready to pay a lot more for what you are buying. There is one reason why it is made there: cheap labor and the more labor costs, the more you are going to pay. The best part about this whole issue is that if companies and the US were to actually cut off trade with these countries, everyone would be begging them to make things in China again because costs were too high.

As countries become more affluent and industrialized, this type of labor and industry moves away in favor of high-tech industry that requires more education than manual work. Yes, there will always be some jobs in the US that are manufacturing oriented, but even if we did bring these factories back to the US they would not increase the job market by much due to a high degree of automation. People in rural areas assume that if we bring back manufacturing to the US, the clock will turn back to 1945 and everyone will have a job again and quality will be stellar. This is not the case, in fact all we will do is speed up the automation of processes if we do this and reduce the needed human intervention in the processes down to a manager and some robot technicians to keep everything running.

If you want to stop making China rich, spend a lot more money on things from niche retailers in the US and then come back and tell us how much you hate Wal-Mart and China. I doubt you will be ready to argue this point once you are spending 5 times as much on those same goods that are making China rich. The free market is an amazing thing and while it has certainly led to the reduction of manufacturing jobs in the US, I would argue we really are not worse off for it in general.